Cuts at the BBC

Auntie’s razor

The BBC gives up trying to please everyone

SINCE it was founded in the 1920s, the BBC has grown and grown. Each week 96% of Britons watch one of its television programmes, listen to one of its radio shows or use one of its websites. The previous, Labour government enriched it, while charging it with colossal but vague tasks such as “sustaining citizenship and civil society”. But the BBC's expansion is ending—or, at least, pausing. On October 6th the corporation explained how it planned to cut its services. The plans reveal a change in the BBC's strategy for survival.

Cuts must be made largely because the licence fee, a tax on television-watching households, is being frozen in nominal terms until at least 2017. The BBC must take over the running of the World Service, an international broadcaster currently paid for by the Foreign Office. The corporation reckons it must cut spending by at least 16% in real terms. About half the savings will come from moving out of its west London HQ and employing fewer managers: some 2,000 jobs will go. The rest will come out of programme budgets.

As surely as the purpose of the Walt Disney Corporation is to make money, the purpose of the BBC is to secure assent for the licence fee. Since almost everybody pays the fee, the corporation has tended to conclude that it should aim to please as many people as possible. For the past 10 years or so, the BBC has tried to create popular shows while also relentlessly targeting groups that seemed to reject its embrace. Urban blacks got 1Xtra, a digital radio station. Asians got the Asian Network. The working-class young got BBC Three, a cheerfully tacky channel with shows such as “Snog, Marry, Avoid?”

The cost-cutting plans signal an end to this strategy. Although none of the targeted channels or radio stations are being abolished, they will suffer the deepest cuts. The Asian Network's budget will be trimmed by one-third. BBC Three and BBC Four (a highbrow channel that runs documentaries about Russian cellists and the British electricity network) will be pruned especially stringently.

Indeed, the BBC seems to be retreating from the goal of reaching everyone. It plans to spend about 15% less on sport rights—the easiest way of corralling a broad audience. Its two big pop radio stations, Radio 1 and Radio 2, will be trimmed only slightly in overall terms. But, since a big proportion of their budget goes on song rights, they will have to pay producers and presenters much less.

Yet some things will be left intact. Radio 4, which carries serious news programmes, will be untouched. The BBC reckons it will be able to spend more on investigative reporting, high-quality drama and natural history programmes. In short, things that media commentators and MPs tend to value will be largely preserved. This makes sense, since politicians largely decide whether the BBC gets to keep its licence fee, and how much the public should be expected to pay. A cynic might conclude that the corporation is moving from trying to please everyone to targeting the people who really matter.